For more than two months already, iPhone 4S jailbreak and unlock program was not yet released. However, the good news is that soon we’ll have both of these as soon as it will be ready for public release. This is because “LOTS of work left” and there are “huge missing pieces” which prevented its release.

Last week, a member of the Chronic-Dev Team had released a video showing an untethered jailbreak for an iPod touch running with iOS 5. @pod2g is known widely because of his discoveries in exploits that leads to jailbreaking an Apple device. In the video, he showed his iPod touch with iOS 5 jailbroken (with Cydia installed. He then rebooted the iDevice and still showed that the jailbreak is still intact. This means that he got an untethered jailbreak for his iPod touch.

His jailbreak were tested for some of the iDevices which includes iPod touch 3G, iPhone 4, iPad 1 and iPhone 3GS that runs with iOS 5.0.1. This means that his jailbreak is fully working on devices that bare A4 chips. He is now currently working for the jailbreak of iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 which both used A5 chips. We hope for the soon release of an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S.

As for the unlocking of an iPhone 4S, probably it will soon follow after the jailbreak will be officially released. This is backed up by @MuscleNerd of the Chronic-Dev team two weeks ago on his tweet that a “very promising “ unlock for the iPhone 4S is in the works.

To wrap things up, an untethered jailbreak and unlock programs will soon be released after the Dev team will finalize all the codes. Follow us for more details.

If you want to upgrade to iOS 5 but you have locked iPhone unit (aside from 4S), you might want to consider the ability to preserve your baseband to be able to unlock. UltraSn0w (V 1.2.4) unlock was just recently released for iPhone 4/3GS/3G that runs iOS 5. Here is the list of basebands that are compatible for unlocking:

iPhone 3GS: 4.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.12.01, 05.13.04, 06.15.00

iPhone 4: 01.59.00

You can follow the procedure in updating iOS 5 without updating your baseband for Windows and Mac in our previous posts.

In order to unlock your iDevice, you need to jailbreak first since it needs Cydia to download the UltraSn0w 1.2.4 package. Make sure that your baseband is listed above or else the unlocking process will not do.

A release note from the Dev Team is posted for users of iPhone 3GS and other possible baseband downgrades for some situations:

Note: there’s a special “trick” that iPhone3GS owners with baseband 06.15 need for iOS5. During the new setup screens you see when you start iOS5 for the first time, you’ll be asked about Location Services. Be sure to select “Disable Location Services” when asked! Later on in the setup, you’ll have the chance to turn on Location Services again when asked if you want to use “Find my iPhone”. It’s fine to turn it back on at that point, if that’s your desire (or you can always go in and enable it in Settings.app).

Also, some iPhone3GS users with the 06.15 baseband may have tried to install iOS5 using a stock IPSW (even though you should never ever try to use a stock IPSW if you’re an ultrasn0w unlocker). If you did try this, your baseband is probably in an inconsistent state, and you’ll need to reflash the 06.15 baseband again (using redsn0w). Be very careful if you use redsn0w to reflash the iPad baseband — don’t interrupt the process! And please avoid using stock IPSWs in the future  Unlockers should never go near stock IPSWs.

If you are a Mac user and wanted to upgrade your iPhone (4 or 3GS) to iOS 5 while you can preserve the unlock, this is the best procedure to follow. This is for the preparation of unlocking your iPhone again using UltraSn0w in the future.

RedSn0w 0.9.9b5 is the tool you need in upgrading to iOS 5 using your Mac computer. This is because the developers in the Dev Team have added the baseband preservation tool to RedSn0w which was previously available in the Pwnage Tool. Please take note that this is not a jailbreaking procedure. Instead, this will only preserve the baseband of your iPhone so you can unlock using UltraSn0w in the future.

Steps in preserving the baseband for iOS 5:

1. Download RedSn0w 0.9.9b5.
2. Launch RedSn0w and select ‘Extras’ and ‘Custom IPSW’.
3. In your Mac, select the iOS 5 Firmware (~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/)
4. Select ‘Pwned DFU’ from RedSn0w after building the new firmware.
5. Start your iPhone to DFU mode: Hold ‘Home+Power’ buttons simultaneously for 10 seconds, release Power button while continue holding the Home button for another 10 seconds. RedSn0w will then put your iPhone in Pwned DFU mode.
6. Close RedSn0w completely and launch iTunes. It will recognize an iPhone in Recovery mode.
7. Hold down ‘Option’ key on your Mac keyboard and click ‘Restore’ while selecting for NO_BB firmware which you had recently created. NOTE: Make sure to select the NO_BB firmware or else you will update your baseband.
8. After restoring, you will now have iOS 5 in your iPhone while preserving the baseband. You can either jailbreak your iPhone now or wait for UltraSn0w update for iOS 5.

Having an unlocked iPhone is what almost every iPhone users wanted to have. This is because you can switch to any carrier any time you want. Sn0wbreeze is the best tool to use if you are running on a Windows OS machine. With Sn0wbreeze, you can preserve the baseband of your iPhone while upgrading to iOS 5 if you are from iOS 4.x.x.

The following steps will upgrade your iPhone to iOS 5 and at the same time will preserve your baseband for unlocking purposes: (Note: can be used with iPhone 4/3GS/3G)

1. Download Sn0wbreeze 2.8 Beta 8.
2. Launch Sn0wbreeze and click OK and the blue arrow below.
3. Drag to the gray box on Sn0wbreeze the iOS 5 firmware but make sure that the firmware for your device is correct.
4. After verifying that the firmware is correct, click the blue arrow below and click on “Baseband Preservation Mode”. Click NEXT.
5. Sn0wbreeze will then start to build your custom firmware. After finished, the custom firmware will be saved to your desktop. Verify and click OK.
6. Start your iPhone to DFU mode: Hold ‘Home+Power’ buttons simultaneously for 10 seconds, release Power button while continue holding the Home button for another 10 seconds.
7. On the DFU Pwner screen in Sn0wbreeze, click START.
8. “iREB” will start and will place your iPhone in Pwned DFU Mode. Close out Sn0wbreeze completely after clicking the confirmation screen.
9. Launch iTunes so it will recognize that your iPhone is in Recovery mode. Click OK.
10. Hold ‘Shift+Restore’ and browse to the newly created firmware in your desktop.
11. Wait for the Restore process to finish and you should have the same unlockable baseband.

Enjoy having an iOS 5 while preserving your baseband!

Everyone is excited with the new iPhone 4S. In addition to that, Apple had a hard time meeting the demand of consumers since more and more people wanted to buy one. While these normal situations are present, the first few batches of iPhone 4S distributed around the world were also seen with some undesirable performances.

First and foremost is the worst performance by the iOS 5 which drains an iDevice’s battery faster than what the normal one. The software upgrade of an iPhone 4 into an iOS 5 from iOS 4.X.X proves that this situation is true. This problem is not merely affecting the iPhone 4S but also the other iDevices that are upgraded to iOS 5.

Another report states that some iPhone users upgraded to iOS 5 are having a hard time connecting for WiFi and 3G networks. And even others can connect to WiFi networks, the signal is not doing well and constantly disconnects from time to time.

Hardware issues being reported include audio abnormalities during phone calls and some users’ experiences “No SIM card Installed” errors. Although the later is not confirmed whether software or hardware related, it still disturb iPhone users who reportedly experiences this kind of problems.

Have you experienced any problems lately in your iDevices? Please let us know if you have any by writing a comment below. Thanks and enjoy!

First of all, if you don’t have any idea about what Tiny Umbrella is all about, you can visit this previous article for more information. How important is an SHSH blob? For jailbreakers and anyone who cannot live with a non-jailbroken iPhone, this is very important.

Tiny Umbrella is the easiest and most convenient tool to use in saving an SHSH blob. This helps anyone to downgrade from a previous iOS version to an older one. Now, the latest version of Tiny Umbrella is updated to support the latest iOS 5.0.1, excluding the iPhone 4S. This is because during the restore process, Apple now signs firmware differently.

Even though there is still no working solution for restoring 5.x on iPhone 4S I have released a 5.01.00 so you can at least save 5.0.1 SHSH. I have added tentative support for at least saving 5.0.1 SHSHs for iPhone 4S but as of now we are unable to use them fully.

Thanks to the developer of Tiny Umbrella. For some point, this helps everybody to save their SHSH blobs even if there’s still no jailbreak available. You’ll never know the future.

Every iPhone users are always looking for new ways to enhance the great smartphone they possess. Today, I want to share two jailbreak tweaks that are simple and easy to install yet it gives color to your iPhone while in the lockscreen mode.

LabelSlide
LabelSlide is a jailbreak tweak that will change your default “slide to unlock” text on the slide button to whatever text you may want. Available for free in the BigBoss repo, LabelSlide can be downloaded and installed immediately after searching it. After you have installed this tweak, you can go to your Settings app so you can change and activate the text you may want to show in your lockscreen. There is an added feature wherein you can replace the text with the current date. But obviously you may not want this since the date is usually displayed on top. Here is a video for more information on LabelSlide.

LockSecondsIndicator

Although this tweak is not the first of its kind, it however caught my attention. This is because when I tried it on my iPhone, it does run smoothly. With less memory used in this tweak (about only 47KB), I can sincerely recommend this tweak if ever you want to enhance the default time display on your lockscreen. That is, it will add seconds in your time with real time indication. To install this tweak, search through Cydia “LockSecondsIndicator” and install. Your iPhone will respring. Go to Settings App and activate the tweak.

There you go; two tweaks that will customize your lockscreen. Tell us how you think about this tweaks by writing comments below.

iPhone users cannot really deny the fact that its SMS app is not as good as with other smartphones. So, the jailbreak developers came up with a solution on enhancing SMS with the release of BiteSMS. And now, another messaging app was launched for an option of the jailbreak community to switch over from the previous BiteSMS that costs $9.99.

SMS+ was the latest addition to messaging app for iPhones. Now available through Cydia, SMS+ cost only $1.99. This iPhone-only messaging app is loaded of great features like the following:

• Quick reply (can also be configured with Activator) – allows you to quickly reply to an incoming SMS without leaving the application
• Text to speech – you can also use your iPhone to “speak” the text message being received
• Status bar notifications – can also mark as read later option
• Does not add another icon in your springboard – it only integrates with the iOS SMS app
• Timestamps for every message
• Mark all as read
• Pull to sort (Sorting by Date or Sender)

Although SMS+ don’t have all the features that BiteSMS had, the price difference is absolutely tempting for you to save more. The developer of SMS+, Filippo Biga, had already brought the jailbreak community with previous tweaks like CameraLock and Springtomize.

“SMS+ is the best solution to improve your SMS experience on iOS. It integrates perfectly in the native SMS application, adding to it those functionalities you won’t ever be able to stay without after having tried them.”

Try it for yourself and give us a comment what you think about SMS+.

As we all know, Apple is good in hiring brilliant employees to work for them, especially coming from the jailbreak community. Peter Hajas, the developer of a very popular jailbreak tweak called MobileNotifier, was hired by Apple earlier last May probably to work for push notifications on the coming iOS 5. After a month, George Hotz, the first person to unlock the original iPhone way back in the year 2007 was hired by Facebook presumably to work on social networking site’s mobile efforts.

Now, Nicholas Allegra, better known as Comex, has announced in his Twitter account that he will be working in Apple as an intern in the coming week. It’s just very funny how a company which he used to love hacking its devices has hired him. Comex’s most popular jailbreak which was released last July known as JailbreakME 3.0 hits more than 2 million devices jailbroken in just 2 weeks. Probably this caught the attention of Apple which made them released ahead of time an iOS update to iOS 4.3.4 and later on to 4.3.5.

He didn’t talk what he will be working in Apple but we will not be surprised that he will be helping Apple to prevent hackers making use of the exploits he used in JailbreakME and Spirit. This also marks that he will be working with security vulnerabilities which may give hackers a hard time jailbreaking the next iOS versions.

A quick view of Comex; Forbes uncovered him as Nicholas Allegra, a 19-year student of Brown University who lives with his parents from Chappaqua, New York. He began programming at the age of 9 by reading online tutorials using Visual Basic which made him ahead of his peers in his Computer Science classes in high school.

He was truly a brilliant teenager who has now a bright future with Apple. In fact, Charlie Miller, a former network exploitation analyst of NSA said about Comex:

“I didn’t think anyone would be able to do what he’s done for years.”

“Now it’s been done by some kid we had never even heard of. He’s totally blown me away.”

SBSettings is one of the best reasons why a person would want to jailbreak their iPhone (or other Apple devices). This is because with SBSettings, you can take control of your iPhone with just a few taps of your fingers. What else you can do about SBSettings? Shortcut toggle switches to turn ON and OFF your WiFi, Bluetooth, Data, 3G or Airplane Mode; you can do a lot more with some features that are not usually used by the iPhone users. I assumed you have SBSettings in your iPhone so you can try the features I am going to discuss.

First of all, you can hide icons in your springboard by the use of SBSettings. For example you have an adult content app or a violent game which should not be exposed to children who may want to borrow your iPhone, this feature will easily lets you hide that app. To hide apps using SBSettings, launch SBSettings by swiping your status bar from left to right and tap “more”. A menu will be presented and you can see “Hide Icons”. After tapping the “Hide Icons” menu, you will be brought to the list of apps installed in your iPhone. Turn OFF the apps you want to hide and it will immediately take effect.

Next thing I recently tried is the “Fast Note” feature of SBSettings. This allows users who are in a hurry to jot things up to input important information rather than opening your Notes in the default iPhone utilities which saved you more time. Just make sure to enable Fast Note in SBSettings by setting it “ON” in “Set Toggles”.

The last thing I want to share is that SBSettings has a default battery percentage feature wherein you can see the actual percentage your battery have. I know some of you may find this ridiculous that just now I knew this is available in SBSettings, but the reason I am sharing this feature is because more people didn’t know this feature is built-in with SBSettings. To turn ON your numberic battery, navigate from SBSettings to more, and clicking on “System Options”. You can then see the toggle switch to turn ON and OFF your battery percentage.

There are more features in SBSettings that will help you enjoy your iPhone and I want to live it up to you to discover.

Many people are confused about how jailbreaking differs from unlocking, especially the new users of iPhones. While many of the jailbreaking community knew the difference, this article is highly dedicated to people who have doubts on how jailbreaking differs from unlocking.

What is jailbreaking?

Jailbreaking is the process which modifies your iOS firmware which then allows unsigned code to run and gain access to files in your iPhone which was previously prevented by Apple. After the jailbreak is successful in your iPhone (also for other iDevices), an unofficial application installer called “Cydia” will now be added in your springboard which will allow users to install cracked apps from the App Store and third-party applications which are not available in the official App Store.

To install cracked App Store apps for free, you need to download first Installous through Cydia. I do not recommend this but it’s worth telling it to everyone. After all, your iPhone is yours. Cydia also provides non-App Store apps that enhance your iPhone called “tweaks” like customization of the themes, lockscreen, ringtones and many more.

Once should not be afraid in jailbreaking their iPhone since the process can be easily reversed by restoring in iTunes in case things may not work as you expected. But trust me, once you have tried jailbreaking your iPhone, you’ll always want to have it jailbroken.

What is iPhone unlocking?

iPhone unlocking is the modification of your device’s modem which allows you to use any carrier SIM cards. The most common method of unlocking is through the use of software but is only limited to some basebands. Some software also requires you to jailbreak first before you can unlock like the UltraSn0w which was developed by the Dev Team.

Gevey SIM is also another process of unlocking your iPhone. You can read more about the details in my previous post.

Since Apple doesn’t allow iOS device’s users to downgrade into an older version of firmware, the jailbreak community had made a solution on how to do it. Basically, in order to open up the possibility of downgrading into a previous version, you must have a jailbroken iPhone and you have to make sure you saved your SHSH blob. For more information about SHSH blobs and its role in downgrading your iPhone, please visit this page. Always remember that downgrading an iPhone into a previous version of iOS is only possible if you have saved your device’s SHSH blob.

If you have tried restoring your iPhone in the past, perhaps you have seen the message “verifying restore with Apple” before it will fully proceed.

Steps in downgrading your iOS version in iPhone (For Windows and Mac users only):

1. Download the iOS version you wish to downgrade to and save it in your desktop.

2. For Windows, navigate to C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc

For Mac, open your Terminal App and enter:

sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts

If you have done it correctly, a text pad should open.

3. At the bottom of the notepad just below the last line that reads: #127.0.0.1 gs.apple.com, add the following line: 74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com. Save the notepad and exit.

4. Connect your iPhone in your computer and put in DFU mode. You are familiar on how to do this if you have been jailbreaking for a while. TO do this, hold the Power button and Home button simultaneously for 10 seconds, then let go of the Power button while still holding the Home button for 10 seconds. If you have done it correctly, iTunes will auto-launch and ask you to restore your iPhone.

5. Press and hold SHIFT key (for Windows) or OPTION key (for Mac) and click restore. Locate the iOS firmware which you had downloaded earlier and select it.

6. Simply click “OK” if there are error messages that iTunes will show. This is just normal. Your iPhone will now be in recovery mode. Download the Fix Recovery and run the .exe file. Your iPhone will then reboot. iTunes will continue restoring your iPhone and it should be fully restored or downgraded to the previous iOS version.

After JailbreakME 3.0 was released, the number of jailbroken iPhones and other iDevices including the iPad 2 has risen to more than 2 million in just 2 weeks. But then Apple had also released new updates to patch the hole for iOS and Safari that were used to jailbreak iOS 4.3.3. With the release of 4.3.4 and 4.3.5, Apple had introduced some “legitimate” fixes that improve the security of Safari. But if you want to preserve your jailbreak (4.3.3), you will not benefit with these updates since you are not going to upgrade to higher version aside from 4.3.3.

Just earlier, iSSLfix was released in Cydia. This tweak will fix all the security related issues that Apple introduced in iOS 4.3.5 without letting you to update to the latest firmware. Since Apple’s main reason for releasing the iOS 4.3.4 and 4.3.5 was to eliminate the use of JailbreakME 3.0, perhaps their aim also includes security concerns. iSSLfix patches vulnerability known as CVE-2011-0228 and is now available for free in Cydia by BigBoss repo. This will then provide you the same protection as having an iOS 4.3.5.

To know if your iPhone is well protected from this vulnerability, just visit https://issl.recurity.com/ on your iDevice and observe the results. If you will see a warning message with the option “Continue” (just like the image below), your iPhone is safe otherwise if you will see an image, that means your iPhone is prone to vulnerability and needs to install iSSLfix if you don’t want to upgrade with the latest firmware.

To install iSSLfix, search for it through Cydia and install the package. Once again, if you are on iOS 4.3.5, you don’t need this. This is very much intended for jailbreak users who are stuck on iOS 4.3.3 in order to preserve the untethered jailbreak.

While there are more jailbreak tweaks coming up every day, I want to make a review for old tweaks yet some people didn’t know about it. ‘EZDecline’ and GPower Pro’ are available in Cydia for quite some time but its functions remain to be useful for your iPhone. Let’s take a look in these $1 tweaks and let me know what you think about them.

EZDecline

Isn’t it frustrating to see that your iPhone (being a smartphone) is not smart enough to put a decline button when somebody is calling you? This happens a lot when somebody is calling you at a bad time. Well, Thanks to the jailbreak developers who provided EZDecline jailbreak tweak which allows you to have an option “Decline” aside from the usual “Slide to Answer” option only. This works with all iPhones and optimized perfectly for Retina Display of the iPhone 4. Available for $0.99 in the BIgBoss repo via Cydia.

GPower Pro

From the developer of Locktopus, comes GPower Pro which modifies the options displayed when you press and hold the power button on your iPhone, iPod or iPad. Aside from the only “Slide to Power Off” option, you will now have the ability to “reboot” abd “respring” your iDevice in the same manner. A simple tweak yet useful when you sometimes find your iPhone hanging or freezes. Designed to work on all iOS versions for all iDevices, GPower Pro is available also for $0.99 in the BigBoss repo.

If you have friends who are not really familiar with using apps in their iPhone, sometimes they may turn on you for some advices and recommendations on what to install. Then you’ll see your apps or browse for categories in App Store and share this apps or games to your friends by sending the URL. Since thousands of apps are available in the App Store, recommendation is very important to save time and effort you will spend.

How about if you have a jailbroken iPhone? You can still copy and share the links for your favorite Cydia apps or tweaks to your friends. Since there are more great features added once you jailbreak your iPhone, this is also the only way to get access with Cydia.

Here are the steps to find and share Cydia tweaks:

1. Launch Cydia and navigate to MANAGE and PACKAGES.

2. Tap on the package you want to share to see the details screen. Below the package name is an option “Change Package Settings”. Tap and hold this option and a menu will pop up for you to choose whether “Open” or “Copy”. Select “Copy.”

3. You can now then send the direct link of the package to your friends through email or messages.

Just make sure that the recipient you are sending the link should have the source added to their Cydia so that the package will be located. Like in the screenshot I included, Custom Lock is from BigBoss repository so when you share the link, the recipient should also have the BigBoss repo in their Sources.